an experiment was conducted to study the effect of metabolizable energy (me) and protein of japanese quails diets on offspring performance and antibody production against sheep red blood cell (srbc). a total of 432 japanese quails (13 week-old) were divided into nine treatments. each treatment comprised four replicates of twelve birds (9 female and 3 male). nine diets including three levels of ...

The ‘big three’ forages in California, alfalfa hay, corn silage and small grain silage, are quantitatively the most important feed group on California dairy farms, as they comprise about 45% of all feeds consumed by California dairy animals. Thus, accurate estimation of their energy content is central to feed formulation that allows maximum animal performance and minimum environmental impact. W...

An accurate feed formulation is essential for optimizing feed efficiency and minimizing feed cost for swine and poultry production. Because energy and amino acid (AA) account for the major cost of swine and poultry diets, a precise determination of the availability of energy and AA in feedstuffs is essential for accurate diet formulations. Therefore, the methodology for determining the availabi...

Lengthy straw/stalk of biomass may not be directly fed into grinders such as hammer mills and disc refiners. Hence, biomass needs to be preprocessed using coarse grinders like a knife mill to allow for efficient feeding in refiner mills without bridging and choking. Size reduction mechanical energy was directly measured for switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), wheat straw (Triticum aestivum L.), ...

Sequential feeding is a cyclic feeding program with 2 diets for 1 or several days used to induce lower feed costs or to improve welfare quality. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of energy [2,800 (E-) and 3,200 kcal/kg (E+)] and protein [230 (P+) and 150 g/kg (P-)] content on daily feed intake and growth in 900 male broiler chickens, and to compare these results with s...

Two hundred ninety-eight Rambouillet ewe and wether lambs approximately 9 mo old from Texas were allotted to pens (29 to 30 lambs/pen). Two replicate pens were fed each of five diets. Two methods of restricting energy intake were evaluated: altering nutrient density (55% vs 72.5% vs 90% concentrate levels) and restricting intake of the 90% concentrate pelleted diet (92.5% or 85% ad libitum inta...

Growth, feed conversion ratio and fillet composition of rainbow trout (initial weight of 9.99±0.109)were investigated in a 6x2 factorial design experiment employing two levels of digestible energy (DE) (2900 and 3500kcal.kg-1) and six feeding rates (1.0%, 2.0%, 3.0%, 4.0%,5.0% of the body weight,(BW) day-1 and to satiation) for 60 days. Specific growth rate (SGR) was highest at 5.0% ration in b...

The objective of this study was to assess whether and how coping strategies affect the welfare of African catfish Clarias gariepinus housed at low and high densities. Group composition influenced feed intake; re-active groups (comprised of 100% re-active fish) had a lower specific growth rate (G) and feed intake and a higher feed conversion ratio (R(FC)) than pro-active groups. Furthermore, re-...

The influence of rumen microbial structure and functions on host physiology remains poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate the interaction between the ruminal microflora and the host by correlating bacterial diversity with fermentation measurements and feed efficiency traits, including dry matter intake, feed conversion ratio, average daily gain, and residual feed intake, using cult...

Energy is considered as an important production factor in many systems and therefore should be managed in parallel with other main production resources including land, labor and capital. In this paper, the energy efficiency scores of some selected dairy farms, using the non-parametric data envelopment analysis approach was assessed. The results for efficient farmers based on two DEA models show...